Bean Gilsdorf is an artist, writer, and editor who combines the methods of each to produce hybrid objects, performances, texts, and installations. Her projects have explored and destabilized historical narratives using the central technique of appropriation: she manipulates images from mass-market history books to make sculptures, textile flags, and videos that expose the weaknesses of dominant narratives through imitation and parody.
Gilsdorf’s work has been included in exhibitions at Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (San Francisco, CA); American Textile History Museum (Lowell, MA), and the Holter Museum of Art (Helena, MT), as well as exhibition spaces in Poland, England, Italy, China, and South Africa. She has been nominated for SECA Award (SFMOMA, San Francisco), and for the Anonymous Was A Woman Award (New York).

For the international online art journal Daily Serving Bean Gilsdorf serves as the Editor in Chief, as well as the author of the bi-monthly arts-advice column “Help Desk”. Her critical writing and interviews have been included in publications such as Art21 Magazine, Artforum, Art Practical, BOMB, Frieze, and The Miami Rail. In 2011 Gilsdorf received her MFA from California College of the Arts (CCA) and currently lives in Warsaw, where she is a 2016-2017 Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara and the Atkinson Gallery at Santa Barbara City College. The event will take place in the Physical Science Building at Santa Barbara City College in Room 101.